Transnational environmental regulation and evolving approaches to compliance

This paper makes an original contribution to the field of law and political science by arguing that compliance in transnational environmental law should be viewed as an action-oriented concept which is best implemented through management measures, rather than the traditional understanding of compliance as static and binary. This new understanding of compliance through the lens of management theory exposes the limited value of international relations theories in explaining the process of compliance in transnational environmental law. The paper argues that compliance may be improved by conceiving of it as a tailored process informed by the management approach. This argument is supported by a study of three different transnational regulatory regimes, including the European Union (EU), in the international climate change framework, and in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Furthermore, this new approach to compliance provides actors in transnational environmental law with an expanded set of measures to overcome the main difficulties that affect their compliance. This paper evidences the wide applicability of this new approach to diffuse actors, different levels of governance and levels of institutionalisation that may affect compliance.

In addition to developing a new understanding of compliance in transnational environmental law, the interdisciplinary approach that underpins this paper is significant in that it is likely to impact future studies on the features of compliance more generally. The approach set out in this paper is particularly valuable for analysing how the behaviour of transnational environmental actors changes due to the impact of management measures within the context of compliance as an action-oriented concept.